The present invention relates to a technique for distributing content to a mobile station using a roaming service.
In the last several years, so-called roaming services have been provided for fixed-line phones and, more recently, for mobile phones also. A roaming service provides to a user communication services of a carrier to which the user subscribes, via network facilities of another carrier, the carriers having a business agreement to tie up their services. Especially, a cross-border roaming service (hereinafter, “international roaming service”) provides an advantage in that a user of a mobile phone, who is located in a foreign country, can receive communication services provided by a carrier in his/her country, via network facilities of a carrier of the foreign country. Methods of appropriately providing communication services to a user via an international roaming service have been proposed in Japanese unexamined patent publication No. H05-236074 and Japanese unexamined patent publication No. 2004-236182
In parallel with improvement of international roaming services, mobile phones are increasingly being used mainly for non-voice communication rather than voice communication. In fact, mobile stations that enable access to a WWW (World Wide Web) server via the Internet for downloading of content and for reproduction/output of the content, are commonly used, and content providers provide various content distribution services.
Contents provided by a content provider include music, electronic books, cartoon images etc., and most contents are protected by copyright. Therefore, a content provider must sign a license agreement with a copyright holder and pay a usage fee, to be allowed to provide a content distribution service.
As coverage by international roaming services increases, it is likely that a user of a content distribution service will be able to receive the service anywhere in the world. While this will be convenient for users, it has a potential to cause copyright problems. For example, certain content may be permitted to be distributed under a contract in Japan, but not in other countries. However, by using an international roaming service, a user of a mobile phone located in a foreign country will be able to receive the content.
A further problem of international roaming services is that communication fees are high. For this reason, some users prefer not to receive a content distribution service in a foreign country. However, if a user uses a push-type information service, in which content is automatically provided to a user without his/her request, or a pseudo-push-type information service, in which a mobile phone automatically requests and obtains content without a user's command, the user may unintentionally receive content.
The present invention has been made in view of the foregoing circumstances, and enables provision of a service in which a distribution method of content is changed depending on a location of a mobile station.